


mumbley-peg

by storytellerdad



Category: general fandom
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-04
Updated: 2015-05-04
Packaged: 2018-03-29 01:17:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3876850
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storytellerdad/pseuds/storytellerdad





	mumbley-peg

I guess I’ve mentioned it before but that period of time from eight years old to nine was a period of immense learning. It was at the time I was just past eight, heading toward nine nicely that my folks decided I was big enough to be helpful. Now that, I came to find out meant I was going to an uncle's farm in Illinois for the summer. The Pill (my older sister) was going also. Oh yea.

In those days our school got out the first week of June. Little league baseball had started in May but ended early about the end of the second week of June. They stopped baseball early so parents could take their annual misery trip to which ever relative drew the short straw for that year. It was called summer vacation. 

Now this particular year we were going to my uncle Ray's and aunt Parelee. Ray was my mother's favorite brother and since he and Parelee (pear lee) didn't have any kids she decided to punish them with us. Now I have to say right here and now that I loved my uncle Ray. He was a very hard working farmer and was very good to us kids. The first part of that sentence is the part I didn't like. He worked hard and so should everyone else. But hey how many kids at eight and a half learned to drive a tractor and keep straight rows? FYI at nine and a half I was taking uncle's pick-up to to town for parts or seed or whatever. Yes back in the mid 50s all those little farm roads were gravel and it was no big thing to see a group of nine, ten year old boys standing around the feed store drinking a bottle of orange pop, seeing how long they could delay going back to what ever chore they were doing. The phone would go off in the store and half a dozen pickups headed out of town. 

The good part of all this was naturally right at the end of our sentence. There was an aunt and uncle with six kids a couple of farms over and another bunch of relatives on a farm in the next county. Right about Labor Day time my folks would come to pick us up so we could go home and back to school. I'm not sure if that was for the better or not. Anyway farm folks will use most any reason for a get-to-gather. They'll get-to-gather for a new baby, a funeral, or send kids back home. What they did was all gather at one house and have a big feed. Lots and lots of food and ice cream. They made ice cream about three times a year. There was no store bought stuff for us. Everyone filled their plates a couple of times and stuffed themselves. The men would gather around two or three ice cream churns, smokin and tellin lies and taking turns cranking the ice cream. The women would take turns holding each others babies and giving thanks that the boys were outside out of their hair. The soon to be fine upstanding young ladies were taking care of the leftovers and doing dishes. Back then we didn't use paper or plastic things, it was real plates, cups, glasses, and silverware. And of course the boys were outside, usually in the front yard. We would swap lies about how fast we could drive the pickups and quite often play some mumbly peg. Mumbly peg is a very old game played with a pocket knife or jackknife as they were called. Every boy had a knife. This was back in the days before we knew knives were dangerous weapons. It was a right of passage for boys to see a flat, rectangular package under the Christmas tree with his name on it when he was eight or nine. It could only be one of two things. A jackknife or a harmonica. Most of the times it was a knife because moms knew you could only hurt yourself a little with a knife, but would drive her completely crazy with an harmonica. 

Back to our big family dinner. Most of the time there would be about 15 cousins there but only about six were boys in my age group. And then there was Robert. I called him Bob Robert. He didn't care as long as he got called before all the food was gone. Now Bob Robert was a lot older that the rest of us. He was twenty something. He would come down from Chicago with my aunt and uncle who were retired. A lot of folks tried to claim he was adopted but that was never proved. Bob Robert had been in the navy and after that he worked for the railroad. They say he used to climb up poles and do something with the wires. Well according to the story one day he didn't do something quite right and came off the pole all lit up and landed with a thud. He had lost a finger on one hand and his left leg from the knee down. So he was on some kind of pension or something. Anyway he could still roll his own cigarettes and had a good supply of some guy named John Barleycorn. Bob Robert stayed, as my mother called it, three sheets to the wind. He didn't fit in with the older men so he would come out and sit with us on the grass. After watching us play mumbly peg for a while Bob Robert asked if any of us had any money. Most of us had a couple of pennies and maybe one or two would have a nickel. So Bob would bet us all that he could throw his knife so it would stick in his leg and not cry. We all ponied up what we had and Bob Robert pulled out a right nice sized jackknife and opened it up and wham. It stood straight up, stuck in his leg, shaking like a drunk in church. (I was going to say like somebody else in church but my wife made me clean it up.) Anyway Bob Robert says he would give any one of us all the money he had just won plus a whole quarter if we could stick a knife in our leg and not cry. There must have been close to 35 cents and that was too much to pass up. I grabbed my knife out of the ground and wiped the dirt off the blade on my shirt and stuck my leg out. I have not heard the girls scream that loud in the movies. My mother jumped up and ran to the front screen door. Isn't it funny a kids scream and right away the mother knows if it's hers. Dad stopped her from embarrassing me and let her know since I was hopping around I would be alright. The knife hole in my leg was not half as bad as the punishment for putting a hole in my pants. 

 

Well like I said at time of life there is a lot to be learned. The next year was pretty much the same as the previous. Lots of food, mostly fried chicken and potato salad. Of course Bob Robert showed up with his three sheets. My mother had wanted to tell me about Bob Robert, but my dad had insisted I needed to figure things out on my own. I didn't know what they were talking about but then just after dinner I got the answer. I went to the outhouse and there was Bob Robert wooden leg and all. I wasn't so dumb after all, I made him give me a quarter to keep his secret.


End file.
